2013 Korean Grand Prix

Managing the ferocious levels of degradation on the front-right tyres was the preoccupation of most of the teams during the Korean Grand Prix as dozens of messages from the team radio broadcast make clear.

A couple of minor but interesting details emerged from Red Bull after the chequered flag. Sebastian Vettel revealed he’d driven the whole race without his drinks bottle working and his race engineer Rocquelin appeared to be encouraging him not to perform his usual post-race ‘finger’ celebration.

We’re considering obviously with the path that we’ve gone on the tyre that you’re running had done two runs in quali so it’s going to be in worse condition. So just expect possibly initially some oversteer going to the front graining and then when the front cleans up it’ll go to oversteer again so we’ll need to be fairly active on the controls.

Pit lane speed limiter off. Procedure is two static bite points and we’re going to release KERS from second gear so it’ll be a bit earlier. And then release all KERS during formation lap and hopefully we don’t have to cool the car much but if we have to I’ll have to tell you at the time to cool the car. And remember if you want to warm up the front tyres we have to be careful about graining as well so braking is the best way to get the temperature in. OK and the procedure for the race start is two rolling bite points and we have to do three burn-outs now.

Just a couple of reminders. Obviously you’ve got KERS at the start. We know how powerful it is at turn two but also at turn three. And just remember it’s a long race, you don’t need to do it all into turn one, OK?

And then you’re going to stop in your box, steering straight, the yellow line is on the right-hand side. You’re going to stop in your box for a bite point check, then neutral, then RS modes. Brake balance for turn one.

With the first pit stops rapidly approaching and most drivers switching from super-soft to medium tyres, Gutierrez is asked how he would like his front wing to be adjusted.Front wing for [medium] question? Everybody’s degrading.

Massa is trying to pass Gutierrez who he’s been behind since lap eight.Just for this lap try something. Save one light… OK I couldn’t tell you because I don’t think you could have heard me with of all the cars. What I wanted to say to you was try and save one light on one of the laps and then use one light to launch to get closer to him.

You are on your target lap. Current lap 14. So you need to look after your tyres and we can push at the end of this stint. This medium level Charlie looks good. You are currently in P3, the race is ahead of you.

Massa finally passed Gutierrez on lap 23. He ended up behind him again after the Safety Car periods and had to pass him a second time later on.OK maybe try a lap where you save everything and then see if you can catch him through sector two and sector three. So save everything for one lap and use everything to launch at the last corner.

Let’s look after the front righ tyre a little bit more. We’ve got a 12-second gap in front to Webber and an eight-second behind to Ricciardo so we can afford to do more to ensure we reach our target lap.

We need you to box this lap. Try and lose minimum amount of time. It looks like a pillar has failed. We’ll try and keep you advised on it. The front of the wing is sparking so you just need to get it back to the pits as quick as you can.

Meanwhile Hamilton, who was supposed to come in on that lap, was held up by his team mate and had to pit a lap later. Message censored by FOM.When are you going to call me in, man? These tyres are *******.

Perez’s front-right tyre exploded on lap 31, bringing out the Safety Car.Perez ahead has a tyre failure. We’re going to have to manage this tyre to the end of the race we’ve got 25 laps remaining, Safety Car will help us.

He will try. If he doesn’t manage he will be out of the points. He’s P10 at the moment so he will try that. There’s also Maldonado in front. Maldonado is on used [mediums] and they pitted ten laps ago, almost, so he is on used tyres and for him it will be hard to go to the end.

A fire marshal’s car went out onto the track despite the Safety Car not having been deployed, though it was quickly summoned as the field bore down on the course vehicle.Safety Car is deployed. This is quite bizarre, there was a car on the track, no message. Safety Car is now deployed. We stay out.

To look after the tyres you need to brake hard and not carry the speed into the corner. So brake late but slow the car down but the last part is under braking. You’re carrying too much speed into the turn-in. That’s how to look after the tyres, it’s the turning phase.

Apologies for the nose, Nico, otherwise that would have been an easy podium. And just be aware there may be an issue with the clutch so no bite point find and just be cautious pulling up into parc ferme, clutch response may not be correct.

Thank you. That’s a great drive Jenson. I need to sit down and work out exactly what happened there but you drove extremely well, looked after those tyres very well. That’s P8 which given where we were after the first few laps is a really very good effort.

Yeah, couldn’t hold off Rosberg. The last five laps when the air temperature started cooling down was a big issue. Not just the front but the rear. Yeah a good one considering the front nose damage at the start of the race.

Yeah, you’re right, that was the true pace, but nonetheless it was a 33-lap old set of tyres that had been hot and cold a couple of times behind the Safety Car so I think nonetheless it was a really good effort, the pace at the end. And the pace when we fitted the first [medium] was really very, very good indeed.

That was some great driving. We were a bit unlucky there but you did a great job just to finish tenth in the points. I think if it hadn’t been for the timing of the Safety Cars we’d have definitely had another couple of places. Some of the cars in front only made it to the end on two stops because of the Safety Car. Well done, really good job today and yesterday.

Lap: Refers to lap message was broadcast on. There may be a delay between messages being said and being broadcast. PR = pre-race; FL = formation lap; VL = victory lap.
Message: Repetitive or irrelevant messages omitted. Notes in italics. Highlights in bold.

The finger is just another excuse that Vettel’s critics use to rationalize their hate. Malaysia, the finger, Newey’s car… Bottom line, they’re angry that he keeps winning, but they can’t just say it like that, so they make up excuses.

Watching F1 for 20+ years I’ve reached the point where I wanna see Seb win every race for the rest of the season and show the finger just to annoy the folks who still try to find excuses why he isn’t that good or why he’s unlikable.

lap 16 Sutil was a bit straightforward to say the least, wasn’t he? I guess eithr he has already lost the seat for next year, or he has just lost it because of this comment… Or maybe the team wil understand his frustration (nay they won’t probably).
Anyway thanks for the script, was great to read!

@mantresx I didn’t find that message confusing at all. They told him he would come in a lap earlier so he could push now. Might seem counterintuitive but the choice of lap on which to pit might have been due to strategy.

@mike-dee Perhaps there has been more conversation that has not been aired on the pit lane feed/main feed. @keithcollantine Any idea what the percentage is of how many messages are broadcasted publicly compared to the actual number of messages?

@maarten-f1 A huge amount of chatter goes on not just between the driver and his team, but crew members at different levels and even going out to the teams’ factories where there are often more people working on strategy (in McLaren’s famous “mission control” room, for example, and their rivals’ equivalent departments).

A large extract of Renault’s team radio from the notorious Crashgate episode in 2008 was published and gives a better idea of the true extent of communication going on. Part of it was recently published here:

I especially liked to hear so much from Alonso as well. I guess next season we won’t hear much at all from Ferrari, italian discussions won’t be broadcast and Raikkonen won’t become much more talkative either.

I like how the Hulk was commenting on the downforce of the Merc (given how hard lewis rode him in sector 2) and busted his engineers balls for giving instructions “3cm from braking” haha. Dude is a star. I could hear how nervous he was “this is 110%, #$%% that mercedes has a lot of downforce” makes me think of david and goliath kind of thing :)

So much tyre management going on this year, Pirelli really have screwed up 2013.

I get what they say they were asked to do but this year they have gone way over the top with how sensitive & fragile the tyres have been. We saw a fair bit early 2012 but this year its seemed 100x worse at just about every single race.

Candice, it’s pretty obvious you’re either a Raikkonen fan and/or an avid Grosjean critic to put it mildly but tell me, what do you have to say about Webber ignoring team orders in Silverstone 2011 or worse still, 2012 Interlagos? Almost anyone would have pretty much done the same thing in Grosjean’s place, unless they’re as whipped as Massa so please, enough of the thinly-veiled insults towards Grosjean because they’re totally uncalled for and unjustified.

David, I think what Candice means is how Grosjean keeps on telling about team orders he hasn’t even obeyed. It’s one thing to say out loud that ‘I will not follow any team orders’ than bringing up them and pretending that he followed them.

David, take Kimi for example. He has never been told to give way to his teammates, yet he did it immediately in 2008 without any extra drama. But if RG was so reluctant to give way to Kimi in Germany, why was he so angry at the team for them hesitating with giving Kimi an order, because that’s what it sounded like. I just don’t think that RG is in a position to cry in public about how he has given way earlier, especially since KR always said that he would had passed RG with or without a team order. Anyway, this is not relevant anymore. Next season they are not in the same team anymore.

Purple, that’s because Massa was a genuine WDC contender, you cannot compare their situations. Your line doesn’t exactly make sense, you say he’s angry at the team for hesitating to give Raikkonen an order but like hello, of course he would be considering they had no qualms with giving Grosjean orders twice before. He became angry and I can see where he’s coming from, especially when it’s a spur of the moment thing.